What Computer game designers can learn from non-electronic games - Greg Costikyan
"Software is an enormously plastic medium. You can do almost anything with software."
Games that succeed best are normally games that are "truly novel."
If you "Green light another Command and Conquer clone, and it doesn't sell, well, nobody can really say you failed. A lot of Command and Conquer clones get published Some of them sell really well. Yours didn't hit the nerve. You're not likely to get fired. If you green-light something truly offbeat and it fails, you must be a fool. What could you have been thinking. Your job is on the line."
"Going with the flow and safe bet is easier"
"Game developers aren't aware of that an entire universe or weird and wacky gaming styles. Their own imaginations are constrained."
Game developers must read and understand wider contexts other than the field they are working in e.g. "Science Fictionoids" - Tom Disch
"If your sole experience of games were published within the last five years - your imagination will be constrained. You will see only what exists in the here and now, and you will naturally be inclined to ring the changes on the apparently possible, rather than exploring more interesting alternatives."
"You will be a "vidiot", a person whose sole understanding of games derives from video games."
"For more gaming styles have been explored in non-electronic media" because, if for no other reason, it's cheaper and I believe solely because of the technology of the time. The risk is less, meaning more creativity is shown.
Bot until the Greek's actually wrote plays and stories "attributable to individual authors" were plays and stories classed as art, but plays, stories and games have been around since man could communicate and define rules for the playing.
First attributable game = The Kings Game, 1780, a chess variant.
"The late 19th century also saw the first commercially - published board and card games - initially for use with folk games like chess, checkers and whist."
"The mass market industry, such as it, consists largely of old brand-name products that sells because everyone knows the titles; crap licensed from film and television; and kids games that are essentially brain-dead."
"The most interesting titles tend to be those aimed at adults"
German board game market is much, much greater than the U.S.
"Great basic model for online games. Relatively short play times, turn-based to minimise latency issues, short turn times, thoughtful decisions."
"English translations of many foreign board game rules can be found here www.gamecabinet.com."
Games don't need to be complex and sophisticated, a great humour factor can make a great game.
"These games, too, are important for online developers to study; they promote communication and debate among the players, and communication is what online is all about."
"Is there a way to give online gamers a way to give players an offline activity that supports the game and is enjoyable in it's own right but doesn't require them to consume bandwidth and consumer time."
"The attraction of the war game lies in mastering a complex and difficult, complicated tactical decisions to be made - exactly how to position your counters to deliver an attack of maximal effectiveness"
"Wargame is a treasure trove of systems design"
"real-time strategy games, in particular, need to study board wargames to learn that you can emphasize many, many different aspects of conflict in different games--it need not all be about building up crap and blowing up more crap. You can emphasize lines of supply, fog of war, combined arms, maneuver, formation, the quality of commanders, the importance of artillery and air power, morale, home-front production, even the willingness of the civilian population to sustain a war. You just need different systems to emphasize different things."
D+D even though "initially had a crap set of rules, it sparked off popularity in this genre of game as it had a great novel background and became a cult hit. It was a form of partisaptory fiction. And the very open-ended nature of the game was exhilarating too."
"The poor quality of rules was perversely an open invitation to creativity as well"
"G.U.R.P.S, an ugly acronym for "Generic Universal Role Playing System," a base set of rules with supplements extending the rules set for all different kinds of different genres, worlds, and role playing environments - another quickly imitated approach."
"Role playing is officially cool"
"An exceptions game has a very simple, limited rules set; but some game components have additional rules printed on them that alter, modify, or break the basic rules. As a result, they can be quite complicated when viewed in toto, but are quite simple to learn in the first instance. "
"The literal game is, of course, you against another player with a deck, and what happens over the table. The meta-game is what occurs beforehand: the purchase of cards, the construction of a deck of cards that support and interact with each other in interesting ways, the trading of cards with other players, and the interaction among a group of gamers that leads players to build decks precisely to take down the decks of other players in the group, and so on."
Live Action Role Playing - LARPS
"The point here is that the dividing line between theatre and role playing can be blurred - and thinking about how to blur it further, and how, for instance, to import theatrical techniques into a graphical MUD, may be a fruitful avenue of exploration."
"If the universe of gaming is filled with so many diverse styles, why is computer gaming stuck in such a rut? Lets see some imagination, guys!"
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